Hi ,
I have been working on db2 on Linux/windows. We are now moving to AIX.
I would like to know what is the best way to back up a 2TB database on AIX.
Can I do the back up to a a file system or should it be done only to large storage systems/tapes. Any info from DBA's working and using similar setups in a large org would be most helpful.

Thanks,

Jay

If you can spare 2 TB of disk space, why not? I don't find many organizations that can afford that though, at least in the long run.

Use compression and incremental backups. Note that compression slows down the process a little.

I'm assuming this is a DW environment so there should be relatively static tables. They would belong to a separate tablespace, which can be backed up less frequently.

Thank you for the reply.
Yes it is a DW environment. we do not have the 2TB data yet but the db size would soon change to 2TB as the plan is to merge many different db's into one big one.

Jay

You have probably figured this out by now but you probably should look at installing TSM (Tivoli Storage Manager). You can do incremental backups a open multiple session to reduce your backup times. However between the hardware and the software costs, it isn't cheap.

If you can set up your database in multiple partitions, you can back up those partitions in parallel. This will really help with the time required to back up a large database.